25 + 1(day)

... So.

The birthday that was!

Against ealier predictions, there were no tears on the day - it was quite lovely actually!

I woke up v early to get ready to go to a presentation thingo at Old Parliament House - The Hun caught me before I ducked out and gave me a card (we went shopping on the w/end and I made him go get one) and told me that my present should be arriving Thursday - I'm getting some awesome canal ear phone thingies which will be v handy for the O/S plane stuff and blocking out violent movie noises (as proven whilst The Hun watched Pans Labyrinth on Sunday night).

After the 90 minute presentation I checked my phone to find five missed calls, four voicemails and 2 messages - awwww. I got quite a few phone calls, emails and messages which was lovely (including an ecard from miss d'jen herself!) - including my parents calling me twice each to check in on how I was going.

The seafood lunch wan't that bad - however having two vodka's with just a pasta and thinly sliced veggies meal and some bits of fruit for breakfast (the OPH standard was bacon and eggs) was not the brightest of moments of mine. Neither was jokingly suggesting we should hang back a bit from the rest of the team for a cruiser in the back of the car on the drive home...

The Hun came home quite a bit earlier than usual which I put down to me telling him should, not that he was up to something. He started grilling me in the kitchen about if I was angry he hadn't actually got me anything, how I hadn't really gotten any gifts on the day and generally trying to rile me up (after my Feb breakdown when I got the sh!ts at the end of Valentines day) - I told him that I'd gotten a party hat from my boss (a hard hard with two drink holders and a straw - you know how it works) and a singlet, a travel diary from another co worker, a buddha token blessed by a monk in Thailand and two keyrings (my brothers had ordered stuff in for me that should be here soonish) so it wasn't like I hadn't gotten anything... he then told me that it was a shame that I wasn't angry enough and I'd taken all the fun out of his suprise - he'd bought me some flowers! I luuuurve getting flowers and he has a special secret florest he visits to get the for me - so very happy about that (I CAN be a real girl, see?!).

After almost 10 months as a vegan, we FINALLY made it out to Au Lac in Dickson - lovely! We had deepfried wanton and 'pork' buns for entree, and a combination hotpot and 'seafood' on crispy noodles for main. It was fantastic and I plan to go there as much as I can in future - so much so that my family are taking me again on Sunday for my birthday lunch!

We got home and there were more flowers on the stoop for me - gf1 had dropped them around (after unsucesfully trying to track my movements for the day - I was all over the place!) AND found we were outside without any house keys. (Un)luckily, The Hun worked out just how easy it is to break into our place - Hooray/Boo!

So, the day that was.

And you might notice that this a work hours update? I've got three days off work! Unfortunately, it's not all fun and games - I have to write a 2000 word report for uni due tmr night, I hafta go over my interview questions for my promotion tmr, I hafta pick up The Huns spiffy new suit, I hafta pick up my birthday shoes from magf, I hafta get more hepatitis needles today and I hafta write my maid of honour speech for the wedding on Saturday....Better get cracking!

Thanks for all the b'day wishes too - *hugs*

Less than an hour till my birthday...

I'm Interfamous (Part Sorng)

I'm sure you all remember the time Totally Not Vegan published that comic they made about my experience (at my insistence) of the service at the dodgy restaraunt? The one that has given half the people in my life an excuse to say to me "But there IS a tiny bit of parmesan" and then crack themselves up?

They've done it again *loves it*!

(They even put my previous comic on the wall of my cubicle like it is at at work in RL!)

That's right - next week I have to go to a seafood restaraunt for a farewell of a team member on my birthday. However, you'll all be relieved to know that my lovely boss arranged a pre-birthday lunch with the team on the Monday at the vegan restaraunt afterall.

Welcome to the Enny-McLeod

That's right - name change time.

Last night I nicked out of my tute a little early to meet up with dadsy and youngest bro and dadsy's long time friend at the Polish Club.

WTPolishClubF?

Merry Muse!

The bistro had closed so I popped over the road with youngest bro for a bag of hot cross buns for dinner and settled in to hear Women in Docs from 8pm - I believe I've seen them before at the Folk Festival and they were absolutely fantastic. The type of songs from the heart that are so suitable for careoke. After the show I came over all fangirl again (as per Holly Throsby) and bought all the CD's they had to sell and loaded them onto the EnnyPod as soon as I was home. I will say that they are one of the few bands that sound better live too - not that their CD's weren't awesome, just that they let loose a little more when on stage - and that's how I hear it when I listen to the CD's.

AND THEN>>>?!

The main attraction!

Mr Rory McLeod.

*swooooooooon*

I've mentioned him here before - most notably on this post after picking up a copy of one of his CDs. The long of the short of our history is that he was at the first folk festival I ever went to, after which I went home and memorised all the songs on his Kicking The Sawdust album which I still love and have always joked to The Hun that I was going to marry him. Youngest bro also ordered the entire back catalogue the other month so I cannot wait to hear all the ones I am yet to hear.

I mentioned to the family that I believed he was to be at the folk festival this year (courtesty of the blogmeet!) and middle bro checked out his website to see that there was unfortunately no mention of him touring the folk festival this year BUT he was doing a show on Thursday night.

Women in Docs were scheduled to start at 8pm - dadsy and youngest bro were seated at 6pm, while the setting up folk were still madly rushing around getting it all ready - hence reserving us a table right at the front!

Enough rambling - I just want to say that if you EVER get the chance, you MUST see him. He is so charismatic, passionate, funny and I wasn't the only girl in the room who was swoony for him! He proddly only played 8-10 songs in the just over 2 hours he played as they're long songs by standard but he was just able to talk to the audience in between each piece. And you know how sometimes you go to a gig and just want them to shush it up between songs and sing? He was not at all like that - I just sat and smiley gawked the entire time.

Similarly to the Holly Throsby show, there were also some rude biatches in the audience. Sitting right in front of me were two 30ish-something biddies out for a night on the town, who perched themselves at their table to share a piece of cake and whispered to each the ENTIRE WiD performance. At one stage, the older one of the two pulled out her mobile and wrote out an SMS and showed it to her biddy friend before sending it: Waiting for Rory McLeod and listening to Women in Docs, you'd really like them. Wish you were here. YES I'M SERIOUS! They would not have been 3 metres from the mic's into which they were singing and were brazen enough to disregard all manners like that! The non messaging biddy even had the nerve to turn around halfway through a song and ask me if they had CD's for sale - Grrrr.

Anyways, as Rory's show was long, people were actually getting up and walking out - I guess that's what happens in Public Service Town at close to midnight on a Thursday... but I was NOT upset to see those women get outta there.

The organiser guy was signing for Rory to wrap it up with two more songs and he put out a call for what his final song should be. Someone called out for the Fruit Shop song that I didn't know and he finished on it and he got loaaaaads of applause. So came back for encore and asked which one he should play now... dadsy and his friend were really keen for the Copper song but I couldn't help but cheer out for the Mariachi Love Song that is the final track on Footsteps and Hearbeats. And I'm so glad he played it (but feel a little bad I didn't support the Copper song for Dadsy and Co).

And the best part?


Oooh yeah - he is EVEN HAWTER when he is hugging you for a photo.

I've been giddily counting the days till he returns in 2008.

*fans self again*

Veggies ARE fun!!!

Adam, Mr Da Stu, Erica, TJ, Somewhat Sober....

toothpastefordinner.com

Who, me?

A paragraph in this article struck me:

"Sometimes the tragedy of a relationship is not that it ends, but that it doesn't. Extracting yourself from a domesticated relationship is hard, especially if you move in together. No matter how much you come to hate each other, you will still find yourself sleeping in the same bed and eating cornflakes from the same box unless you make a monumental effort and call a removal van, break the lease, divvy up the spice collection and the CDs and find somewhere new to live."

I could list five people straight off the top of my head that this applies to.

People looking back on their past after realising it too late.

People in the midst of it now.

People who don't yet realise it.

Waste of a Day

Anyway that my day could be wasted today, was wasted.

I wasted time this morning sleeping in because The Hun watched the second last episode of the last season of The West Wing and I egged him on to watch the final (like you'd want to watch the last one by iteslf) - an error in sending the files to the Xbox meant that the final episode stopped halfway through and a scramble for network cables et al ensued, pushing bed time back until after 1am.

I wasted my day checking the fax for a bank statement that shitty St George need to send me. My original Guess bag (the one that played a starring role in NerdFest I: Where it all began) developed a tear in the lining above the zipper inside - it's less than four months old!!! I chucked out the receipt and don't keep my statements (my bad) so I have to get a statement faxed to prove that I did purchase it so that I can swap it over, and the bank charges me $7.50! So I got the fax yesterday and the waify slow teller dood ordered the WRONG statement (ie, before I bought the bag) though faxed it to me within an hour. I've made FOUR phone calls since yesterday lunch nagging him to send the correct one and it STILL hasn't arrived - I think they're having trouble working out how to send it to me without charging me a ridiculous fee. I also sound like a dirty perve because there's no direct number listed so I've been calling the home loan centre part in there and ask to speak to the guy with the ring of two hands holding a heart on his wedding finger. There was nothing else of interest on the guy and he was so slooooooooow at serving I was just staring at it.

My girly financial sense tells me that even though I have a new bag that I'm betrothed too, I'd be better off getting a replacement for old goldy than getting my money back - I got him on sale for $90 something when he was worth much more (there was a double discount at the time I bought it) but if I exchange it I PRESUME I'd get one worth what he was worth? I'm thinking of a lovely little black one, but I'll keep you updated on that.

I wasted an afternoon in my lecture as it was just a guest lecturer pitching his product at us. I didn't learn anything and it lasted less than hour of the two hours scheduled AGAIN.

I wasted an evening in the tute as I was told I was meant to have a draft ready of an assignment I didn't know was even going on.

And I've wasted my time almost posting a request for help with working out what accomodation is near the Hordern Pavilion as DAVE MATTHEWS HAS RESCHEDULED HIS SHOWS TO WHEN WE'RE IN JAPAN AND NOW I CAN'T GO!!!

I don't believe it!!!

Onwards to battle!

12 mini hot cross buns.

36 hours.

Guilt levels?

Suprisingly low.

IT'S AWN!!!




(PS - I'm going to Pump class tonight).

Blogmeet - Canberra edition

Blogmeets are interesting experiences, that are yet to go unnoticed by those around me (unfortunately!).

When I met up with Erica in Melbourne, eldest bro and his gf were there too.

When I met up with D'jen, Adam, Nat, Deb, Jac and TokenWoman in Qld, dadsys persistent questions about exactly why was I going to Qld so early resulted in him lecturing me on the dangers of meeting people from the internet who pretend to be people that they aren't really.

When Desci and Bob made it up to Canberra (alongside Kerces and RandomGit) I was approached by no less than three different people the next day asking 'who were those goths you were with?' (Canberra is tooooooo small).

So, I shouldn't have been suprised about being questioned by middle bro's friends 'how are your blog friends?', after having dinner on Sat night with Ducky, Mummy/Crit, TJ, Dean, Foo and Matt!

I was (more than a) little nervous about this one - everyone else had met up before so I was totally the gatecrasher- not helped by the feeling of my hair clamming down on me, the heat and the nerves making me sweat like a steamed puddin' and the 'accidental' removel of my name from the email that updated the location of the blogmeet...

But I had a delightful time! I learnt a few things about testicles, party themes, folk festivals (I STILL can't find when Rory McLeod is playing?!), being dooced and what people have read that I've written (TJ found my secret post, which is only fair as I found one of hers once!). It really was wonderful to actually meet everyone and I hope there's another one soon (I'm totally up for guitar hero)!

Busy Bee Week (please Gawd, no more)

So last weekend was a hive of activity round here - three updates in three days!

And then?

Nu'n.

Uni is back on and I'm into week three - I'll save you the ranting about how sh!t it is and instead provide you a rant about my lack of time:

Monday: Work - Martial Arts - Family Dinner - Home at 9:30
Tuesday: Work - Uni - Makeup trial for Wedding - Home at 10:00
Wedneday: Work - Karate Kids - Martial Arts - Marital Arts Dinner - Home at 10:30
Thursday: Work - Uni - The Hun's Family Dinner - Home at 10:00
Friday: Work - Travel Agent - Ross Noble - Home at 11:00

So all this week, I haven't been home after work to listen to podcasts, update or even get a good read in on my blogs (let alone clean, do uni, read, eat properly etc)!

So, I have a few dotpoints to catch you up with (otherwise there's too many posts and I'll forget what I was going to say and I know you hate not knowing every ridulous point about the mundate parts of my life).

• Haircut this morning - $190. I AM NEVER GOING BACK THERE - the girl was half an hour late to start, was VERY rough with the foils, used water that was too hot such that I pulled my head out of the sink, yanked at my hair, cut my fringe too short AND it was only a TRIM and foils - not a CUT and foils. Who pays that much for a manky trim? Not me, again.

• Passport arrived this morning - the fuzzy vaseline affect was a bit of a help, believe you me.

• I think I drank some curdled skim milk this morning - is there any risk of food poisening with that?! I feel fine so far...

• Saw Ross Noble again last night (as mentioned above) and although he was SUPER FUNNY he wasn't AS good as last year? I smiled for the whole 2.5 hours but there was only one or two OUT LOUD laught.
  

• I fell in love again - with a handbag. I saw it at Myer and did a cheesecake dance, I went back another day and showed my boss and tried it on and she told me we were made for each other (the bag and me, not my boss and me)(as lovely as she is) and I've spent many a day pining over him... here he is:

• Mocha Guess Gabrielle. Yesterday, my boss OH SO CASUALLY dropped to me that Myer was having a 25% off sale for bags over $75, so maybe we should head over at lunch time. And we did and he wasn't there - I was mini distraught until I fetched a lady to check the backroom, and in the glorious back room we were reunited again. With credit card in one hand and mobile in the other, I paid for the bag and called mumsy to ask if she'd pay it back for me for my birthday, and it was done. And then at D'jen's suggestion, I took it home today to show my parents, and "suggested" I'd take it now and the 'suprise' part of my gift would be the birthday gift. SO HE IS MINE AND I'M TRYING TO PICK A SUITABLE EVENT FOR HIM TO MAKE HIS DEBUT. He's my winter bag, and slightly larger than my current summer bag (sorry to those of you who already received an email from me entirely dedicated to the bag).
  

• My foot is healing nicely - there's still two holes in my foot and last night I finally stopped the whole rinsing foot in warm salty water and hairdrying each night (I got tired of it) but am still keeping a bandaid on it. ALTHOUGH, the left side of my big toe and right side of my second toe are pins and needled ALL THE TIME. Is that normal?!
  

• We draft booked the rest of our holiday, and I have a question for the worldy ones out there. The accomodation that is available to book through the agent is somewhat limited (ie, only 6 places to pick from in Tokyo) - is it safe to book overseas accomodation from here and then have it all magically work out when you get there? We'd need to work some out for Phuket, Ko Phi Phi, Bangkok and Tokyo. I'd reaaaally appreciate any advice on this one as I'm pure panic at the thought of rocking up overseas and finding the hotel doesn't exist/they "can't find" our booking/they don't speak English etc etc.

• Meeting some Canberra bloggers tonight too - Squee! Nervous/excited/anxious/thirsty.
  

I don't know why I find this so funny...

I think it's the rhyming "Mad at Dad"...


From marriedtothesea.com

Hens Night

Last night was Magf's Hens Night.

Organising this party made me realise that I don't want to have a Hen's party - 32 people were invited, 13 people responded with yes, 13 responded with no and 6 people didn't even reply. So many people don't even bother to reply or even attend, and then there's always the other people who pike later on or whatever - more trouble than it's worth! Just another night that you have all these expectations on that will never be as good as you hoped... not that it was a totally sh!t night anyway!

I picked her up to take to the Pole Dancing class and we were expecting 3 people to watch and 9 people to dance... only to find one girl was sick and stayed home, one had pulled her neck muscle and one had had a mole removed so we ended up with 7 dancers and 5 watchers.

I knew that I wasn't going to enjoy the dancing and I was totally right - if there hadn't been so many people watching already, I woulda done the watching thing. I only knew Magf and one of our martial arts students, so I felt reaaaaaally self conscious - and I'm too self conscious at the 'best' of times. I stopped participating halfway through, because I couldn't get the whole spinning thing to work - I didn't shift my weight properly, didn't move my hips in the right way and gripped too hard or not hard enough (did you know that the poles actually spin in the ground?! Neither did I!). I just don't think I'm the type of person who is ever going to enjoy faux humping a pole while squatting, flicking my hair around (I always wear my hair up) or using my cellulite to hold my up as I wrap around a pole... Either way - Magf had a good time:

(yeah - they had costumes to wear over our normal clothes at one of the guests insistance!)

After that we headed out to Turkish (the same place we took Desci and Bob a fortnight ago!) and I ate soooo much. Mental note - explain that when you want falaffel and hummus for a main, you don't want TWO mains - I only ate 1.5 falaffel due to all that bread! Here's Magf, myself and another senior from the school:

(I didn't know I'd been outside enough to get tanlines and I MUST learn to tilt sideways in photos to shrink down those shoulders! )

Everyone was meant to wear pink, but I couldn't find anything pink at home so I headed out to the shop with my old boss on Thursday - that top I'm wearing is actually a dress - guess how much it cost?! I'll tell you! $29.95 for one, or $25 for two (in el-cheapo Sisco), so it was only $12.50! Bargain. Also - see that glass in front of me? Brown Brothers Moscato - GO AND GET SOME NOW!

At dinner there was a bit of downer that started to wind the whole night down - the girl that had pulled the neck muscle is a bit of a high stress drama and was sitting holding her chest during dinner. The girl next to her asked if she was ok and neckgirl replied that she was having heart palpitations - when the girl asked if this was normal, neckgirl replied that it was, but not usually for this long. Because neck girl was sitting with her eyes closed, one hand over her heard and one hand over her mouth (seemingly holding any spew back), conversation started to lull at the table and everyone watched on tentatively. This was proddly the worst thing to do as she started to get even worse and it started to get faster and stay longer, so another girl helped her to the bathroom - she kinda staggered and stumbled there with her friend supporting her. Next thing we new? An ambulance shows up. The staff had laid her down in the bathroom and then she had pains down her right arm, her fingers and hands wouldn't move as they had stiffened up and she was bawling. Anxiety attack. They moved her outside after about half an hour and she sat with the ambos outside for close to an hour - the mood died down a bit, obviously.

So, we fitted Magf out in the gear we picked up from Fyshwick the other week:

(The flashing penis is magentised onto a metal penis badge... all class)

It was at this point I starting feeling my internal monologue kick in - I'm too old for Civic. However, that would then mean that I'm also too old to eat soy ice cream for lunch or salty chips in bed at 2am just because The Hun is away, so it should maybe be that I was too sober for Civic (being dessi and all).

We headed out to the new Uni Pub (not to be confused with either of the Uni Bars in Canberra) and it wasn't too bad it - it has 4 levels open with one more to go - There's a clubby one on the ground floor, a grill house that was closed, a pool floor that was playing 'Roxanne' so we hightailed it) and then an 'executive' floor that requires collars and was hosting a private function. We sat in there for a few hours and the 3 girls (including Magf - isn't that poor?!) that made it to Civic sat on the couches and had a few drinks and only got hassled by a dood once (who was toooooooo drunk and got removed shortly after). I also got a 'nice stick on bear' by some old dood (all the people at dinner got bride beanie bears to pin on to their tops) but I told him it was a Hens Night and continued staring straight ahead.

There was another hens night in there as well - and their Hen handcuffed herself to some guy from the private function and took him into the lift and disappeared for like 20 minutes. Now that is so totally wrong - I don't understand these people who are about to get married and decided that all of a sudden hooking up with someone isn't cheating... it makes me so mad! She was yucky anyways... mebbe hence the handcuffs? It also shocked me how nonplussed her gaggle of hens was about it - I knew that one of them there was to be the sister in law - I'd be SPEWING!

Anyways, we looked for somewhere to dance but the buzz still hadn't come back from dinner (not so much out of worry, I think that ppl were just pissed she done the drama act) and we headed to the convenience shop for something for the drive home (I wanted caffeine and salty chips, Magf a sausage roll). In there another oldish dude said to me "I've never seen a pink dress look so good". Can I say - I thought that was lovely. Not in a "OMG LETS PASH" lovely, but in that I'd felt totally awkward on the poles, stayed sober for the drinking (after the wine at dinner) and watched one of the other two girls talk to about 20 guys that night - it was nice to hear someone say something like that (it didn't sound like a come on that was actually meant to go anywhere, so I took it as a compliment).

Anyways - that was the Hens Night! I'd biasedly say it was the most successful of the three I've been to, but I still don't think I ever want one of my own.

Augie March - Cold Acre

Preface: I was thinking about writing this post this morning while watching JTV (The Hun is camping this weekend) and all of a sudden I received notification of a comment relating to what I was about to write about!

Rather than being some kinda bizaare jedi mind reading trick, I'd made reference to it in a comment on an earlier post. It was a very confusing couple of minutes before I worked it out...

So.

Those of you who may not have heard of Augie March before the JJJ Hottest 100 should definately know who they are now. But I have a question I'm hoping to get some help in answering.

Have you see their filmclip for 'Cold Acre'? I can't get it to work on their site, so here's the YouTube:



Anyways, can anybody give me any info on where it was filmed?! Because there are times I'm SURE it's filmed in Canberra, after the bushfires swept through the pine plantation near the parkway (this is what the commenter this morning said too)!

I can't find a way to contact them to find out... so any thoughts or info anyone could give me on this would be very much appreciated!!